


Can't Go Out, Can't Go Home

by MirabileLectu



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Drama, Lost Bucky Barnes, Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-07-16
Updated: 2014-07-16
Packaged: 2018-02-09 03:37:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,140
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1967520
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MirabileLectu/pseuds/MirabileLectu
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When he set out to track down the man who had once been his best friend, Steve Rogers had no idea just how daunting a task that would turn out to be. With Sam Wilson at his side and Tony Stark to help sift through SHIELD data reaching back decades, what they find leads them down a path that none of them ever intended to follow.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Can't Go Out, Can't Go Home

“Alright, alright, keep your hair on. And listen, if you're a reporter that figured out I'd have JARVIS offline for repairs this afternoon you should know I'm heavily armed. Literally.”

The door slid open to reveal a sweat and grease stained Tony Stark with a half-finished thruster glove held at the ready. Truthfully it looked more like a pile of scrap metal crudely taped to his hand than a piece of his armor, but the glowing palm pad was enough to warn off any intruders who might have considered testing out its effectiveness. This particular intruder had no interest in barging in uninvited however, and he had a much more useful weapon at the ready than physical force.

“Hello Tony.”

Unfortunately for Steve's personal amusement, the total shock only flitted its way across Tony's face before his customary smirk returned, settling in like an old friend as he crossed his arms and leaned against the door frame.

“Well well, if it isn't our little rebel. I never took you for the institution destroying type Rogers, but I gotta say I'm impressed.”

Steve considered being insulted for a second, but he'd known Tony just long enough by now to recognize his sarcasm face when he saw it. Still, that didn't mean he couldn't needle him a bit. Putting on his best serious face to match he said sternly, “I know it's a difficult thing for you to grasp sometimes, but I was doing the right thing. S.H.I.E.L.D. had to go.”

“Woah there soldier, I was being serious,” Tony replied, putting his hands up in a conciliatory gesture. “I can do that every now and then, believe it or not. And besides, you know I never trusted those sneaky bastards any further than I could throw them, and my impressive tossing abilities aside that still didn't add up to much. You made the right call.”

A small smile crept over Steve's face, and he held out his hand. “It's good to see you again, Tony.”

A smile from Tony answered him, genuine instead of sarcastic this time, and he reached out his ungloved hand to grasp Steve's firmly. There were more unsaid things than even the resident math genius could count in that handshake: greeting, reunion, relief, and some deeply meant thank yous that had never quite made their way out in the open. There was something different about Tony now that Steve couldn't quite pin down just yet, something older and maybe just a little wiser in a face still lively with just enough mischief to be familiar. Then again Steve was sure he didn't look just the same as he once had, not after everything that had happened in the last few weeks. He'd been through hell and back – they all had. It was bound to take a toll eventually.

But now was not the time to get into the specifics of how they'd earned each and every line on their faces, not when they were hovering uncertainly in a doorway that led up to the private penthouse of the frankly ridiculous tower Tony called home. The thing was just and big and gaudy as Steve remembered it, although perhaps a touch less egotistical after the multistory letters spelling STARK had been blown up and never replaced. The A was still there, curiously, still fragmented and still precariously perched on the rebuilt walls like some sort of badge of honor. He couldn't begin to guess why Tony hadn't taken it down – but then it was better not to try and figure out how his mind worked anyway. It was safer that way.

With a wave Tony gestured Steve to come inside, leading him through the doors that sectioned off the highest public floor of the tower from the private elevator. “So, Mr. Revolutionary, what brings you to my neck of the woods?” he asked as they approached the electronic panel that was completely dark. “I thought you'd be busy getting courtmartialed or something.”

He leaned down to pull open the metal of the panel, exposing the circuitry beneath to do some quick and incomprehensible tinkering. A second later the bell chimed gently and the doors slid open, allowing them to step inside.

A sudden memory of another elevator ride not so long ago intruded suddenly, but Steve pushed it aside as they began to rise through the floors. “Oh, well, it's funny how lenient the powers that be are when you help stop a secret internal terrorist group from murdering a significant portion of their population. It even makes them happy enough to gloss over a lot of sins – you should try it some time.”

“Invite me along next time and I will. I have to say, it was pretty selfish of you to keep all that fun to yourself – why didn't you call me?”

“What, so you could throw rocks at them? If anyone was in danger from Hydra's plan it was you even if you don't have your suits anymore, there was no way I was going to put you in the line of danger like that. Besides, it's a little hard to stop and come pick someone up when the entire US government has you on their fugitive list.”

“I still could've come to help, I'm not completely helpless without them – wait, how did you know about my suits?”

Steve quirked an eyebrow, suppressing a grin at the sight of Tony Stark whipping his head around in confusion. “Um, the internet? It was all over the tech blogs, I think there were some people who were actually sobbing when you destroyed them instead of selling them or giving them away.”

If Steve had just confessed to actually being an alien from another dimension – or perhaps something else that they hadn't already seen with their own eyes – Tony would have looked less like he'd just been punched in the face. “You...blogs? You read blogs? Blogs about me? When did that happen and why wasn't I informed of this?”

At this point he didn't even bother to hide his grin, rolling his eyes ruefully. There was nothing, he had discovered, quite so satisfying as rendering someone seventy years your junior completely speechless when you didn't run screaming from the sight of a computer. “Yes, Tony, blogs. I'm old, not dead – why do I have to keep telling people that?”

The elevator glided to a gentle stop, doors chiming faintly as they slid open to reveal the penthouse beyond. The last time Steve had seen this place it was in a catastrophic state of disarray, an unfinished shell of a place that had been battered and broken nearly beyond all recognition. But in the time that had passed the space had been completely rebuilt to the exacting specifications that Tony required. The floors gleamed with flawless marble, glass and chrome shone from every wall and window, and here and there Steve could not help but notice small touches of art and decoration that had to have come from a certain woman who had shown herself to be the only good influence Tony had ever accepted. Tony led Steve through the entryway, a smile on his face that was in all likelihood due in equal measure to Steve's joke and the look of appreciative wonder on his face.

“Alright fine, you're not a total dinosaur. But seriously, enough chitchat. It's nice to see you and all but I get the feeling you didn't come here just for a social call, so what is it? You're can't still be S.H.I.E.L.D.'s errand boy anymore, can you?”

This was where things were going to get tricky. He'd rehearsed the following conversation a dozen times since he'd made the decision to come over here, running over every permutation and possibility in his head in an attempt to get his pitch just right. If this was going to work, he was going to have to catch Tony right away before he had the chance to say no and distance himself from the situation entirely, because once he made up his mind about something Steve knew there was very little chance of changing it back. Coming to a halt next to one of the floor to ceiling windows that looked out over one of the most majestic skylines in the world, Steve drew in a deep breath and took the plunge.

“Tony, I need your help.”

-

On any other day, Steve would have reveled in the fact that he had stunned Tony into silence not once but twice. Hell, on any other day he would be whipping out a camera at this exact moment to record the look of stunned shock on the face of the biggest smartass he had ever met. But as it stood he could only sit on this couch worth more than his entire apartment overlooking the most spectacular view in New York City and wait for Tony’s brain to catch up with what it had just heard, hoping quietly that he believed him.

True to classification of genius that Tony loved to bestow upon himself, it didn’t take long for him to work through his confusion. “Wait wait wait, let me get this straight. You’re telling me that not only is there another frozen senior citizen running around like a spring chicken, not only is he a shadow assassin that no one had even heard about until he helped almost take out ten percent of the population, but on top of all that he’s somehow none other than America’s Favorite Tragic Hero Bucky Barnes? And you lost him?”

Steve stared down at where his hands were knotted tightly together in his lap, resisting the urge to fidget uncomfortably. “Yes. Well, no. Sort of. It’s complicated.”

“Oh, it’s complicated? Please, enlighten me how it’s so complicated Mr. Rogers, since I’ve obviously oversimplified it.”

He may have been a patient man, but the sarcasm dripping off of Tony’s every word was enough to make Steve snap. Looking up with an angry frown on his face he glared at Tony fiercely, causing him to draw back slightly in surprise at the intensity of his expression. “Ok fine, I’ll make it simple for you if you don’t think you can handle it. My best friend was kidnapped by a group of Nazis who tortured, manipulated, and brainwashed him. They used him like a puppet to kill people without remorse, and when he was done they would just wipe him and freeze him all over again. And by the time I met him again he was so lost he didn’t even know his own name, much less who I was or what he was doing. But what he did doesn’t matter because he’s my best friend and I know that he’s starting to come out of it, and he needs my help. Which means that I need yours to find him. Does that clear it up?”

Today was set to be a banner day for shutting Tony Stark the hell up. He looked at Steve with wide eyes and a wondering expression, but it wasn’t long before he nodded slightly with a contrite look on his face. “Yeah, I’d say that covers it. Christ, our lives can never be easy, can they?”

“No, they really can’t.” Steve took a deep breath, deliberately loosening the muscles that had tightened up in his anger one by one until he was calm again. He shouldn’t let his temper get the better of him like that, but he’d been worn down to his last nerve by frustration and exhaustion for at least two weeks now, and it was starting to add up. “Listen Tony, I’m sorry to spring this on you all at once, but I don’t really have a choice. Every day that goes by makes it harder to find him, and we’ve been running into too many dead ends to keep going. If there was anything else we could do I’d do it, but I’m out of options over here.”

“I get it. And hey, it’s not like I’m doing anything else at the moment.”

“So you’ll help?” Steve asked, not quite believing that it had been this easy.

Tony shrugged with a nonchalance that was very nearly convincing. “Sure, why the hell not. Could be fun.”

Reaching across the space between them Steve clapped him on the shoulder, relief and a renewed surge of friendship for this impossible, ridiculous, surprisingly kind idiot surging through him. “Thank you. Really, Tony, thank you.”

“Yeah, man. What’s the point of being a billionaire if you can’t use your vast technological resources to help a 95 year old super soldier track down a brainwashed assassin every now and then?” Tony’s smirk was infectious enough to make Steve smile right along with him.

“But I have just one more question.”

“Yes?”

“What the hell did you mean by ‘we’?”

“Ah. Right.”

Twenty minutes, a few text messages, and several jokes about cell phones for the elderly later, the elevator doors whooshed open again and Sam Wilson strolled into the penthouse. The look on his face as he gazed around and the glass and chrome and marble that surrounded him was somewhere between wonder and sarcasm, and Steve couldn’t help but grin to see it. If there was anyone who would be immune to Tony’s particular brand of bullshit laced charm it would be Sam, and for that reason entirely he suspected that they would make a great team. Or a terrible one. Only time would tell.

Strolling up to the couch where they were sitting he nodded appreciatively, a wry grin on his face. “Quite a place you got here. I mean, it’s kinda on the small side, but I like what you’ve done with it.”

“Yeah, it’s not much, but I do what I can. I’ll get around to actually making it look nice one of these days.”

He stood, scanning Sam up and down quickly before sticking out his hand. “Sam, right? Or did you just wander in off the street?”

“Bit of both,” Sam answered, taking his hand and shaking it firmly. “Your door robot was nice enough to let me in so I figured I was welcome.”

“Oh JARVIS decided to finally finish rebooting, did he? I’ll have to take him offline again, he’s obviously not doing his job right.”

“Well now that I’m here, how about a drink? From the looks of things you two have just been sitting around goofing off while I went and did all the real work.”

Tony’s eyebrows rose, whether from surprise at the audacity of Sam’s request or perhaps because he was impressed by it. He looked over at Steve, jabbing a thumb over at their new guest. “He lets himself in and he demands drinks? Where’d you find this guy Rogers?”

Steve smiled and opened his mouth to answer, but Sam beat him to it. “Didn’t he tell you? He started following me in the park one day like a lost dog and I haven’t been able to get rid of him since.”

That at last was able to earn a genuine bark of laughter from Tony, and shaking his head slightly he made his way over to the lavish bar that took up a significant portion of the wall. “Well now that deserves a drink. What’s your poison?”

“Bourbon. Neat.”

“My kind of man. Steve?”

He shrugged, feeling more than a little irresponsible for accepting a drink at this hour of the afternoon but not quite enough to care. “I’ll take a beer, I guess, if you’re serving. Whatever you have that’s cold.”

Not five minutes later they were all seated on the sofa together, drinks in hand and chatting like old friends who had been reunited after being separated for far too long. As Steve had suspected it did not take long before Tony and Sam discovered their mutual love of ridiculous flying suits, and soon they were chattering away in a language that may have been English but certainly didn’t sound like it. Steve was perfectly content to fade into the background as they talked, allowing himself the brief and simple pleasures of sipping at a cold beer while his friend – no, two of his friends enjoyed themselves.

Honestly, he’d never really expected that he would end up here. Not just sitting in a penthouse of unimaginable luxury in a part of New York he’d only dreamed of visiting as a child, but sitting here enjoying the company of two such men whom he could call his friends. Lonely childhood notwithstanding, only a few weeks ago he’d felt as though he didn’t have a single person in the world he could truly trust. But the intervening time had proved him surprisingly and happily wrong, especially in the case of one Sam Wilson. Sam had

Hell, even Tony was surprising him. Their introduction had been…rocky to say the least, and at first he hadn’t even wanted anything to do with the arrogant, selfish playboy he’d first met. But appearances could be deceiving, and Steve was learning that while his instincts were generally good there was no accounting for the ways that people could change. And something had changed with Tony, that much was becoming increasingly clear the more time they spent together. He had no idea what that could have been, but Steve found himself thinking that Tony Stark might well end up being a good friend as well instead of just a reluctant teammate.

Sam and Tony were still deep in whatever incomprehensible conversation they were having, and as happy as Steve would have been to let them keep at it, there was in fact a reason that he’d come here today and talking about wingsuits was not one of them.

He waiting for a moment for a lull in the conversation before interrupting. “Gentlemen, I hate to do this but I’m afraid we do have some business to attend to. Sam, I’ve already filled Tony in on the basic background info, so he’s caught up. Mostly. Did you find what you were looking for?”

Sam sighed, the grin fading from his face as he sat up straight in what Steve had recognized soon after they met as an unconscious mimicking of standing at attention. All at once he looked troubled, tired, and worried, the very last three emotions that his trip to try and discreetly pry information from an old friend still on active duty should have elicited. He looked over to look Steve in the eye with a grim expression, and his heart sank at the grimness of his expression.

“Boys, I think we have a problem.”

-

A figure slips through the shadows, unseen by any but the mouse that scurries away from his sudden movement. He flits from blindspot to hideaway with practiced timing that comes as easily as breathing now, moving with the clouds that cover the moon and the cycles of bored guards easier to fool than any child. Before they've made even one circuit of their post he's there and gone again, a passing figment of no one's imagination.

The figure all in black pauses only once in his confident strides once he enters the hulking building in the heart of the complex, halting in the middle of an empty corridor to assess the map burned into his memory with searing precision. A moment later he's off again, the hunter stalking ever onward to where his prey waits placid and unsuspecting. No, prey is not the right word for the man that is surely sitting and gloating over his bloody success with a cigar and too much comfort – tonight, he is a target.

The road to this moment has been a long and violent one, fraught with too many close calls and near misses to be comfortable. But that will make tonight’s success all the sweeter once it comes, once he completes the mission that has consumed his days and nights for far too long. Just a few more hallways to navigate between guard shifts (easy), climbing swiftly and silently into an open air vent (cliche, but effective), and a quick shimmy towards the vent (careful, careful).

Damn. The room below is just big enough that the edges of it are out of sight from this shuttered vent intake, and the one piece of this carefully laid out plan that has been left to chance is already going wrong. Trust the bastard not to be sitting on the plush sofa with a drink in his hand in the visible center of the room like he should be. That would make this too easy, and if there’s anything he’s learned by now it’s that too easy is a concept that doesn’t exist in this line of work.

There’s nothing for it then. With the indirect method out he is left with direct contact only, never his strongest suit but occasionally an unpleasant necessity. It takes a few minutes to work the grate open silently, longer than he would prefer with guard rotations ticking away in the back of his mind as he bends his concentration to the frustrating task. Unscrewing the fastenings from the inside would be tricky business even without such limited space and time, but he is a professional through and through and has gotten through tighter spots than this before. Soon enough the grate is swung down on thankfully silent hinges, and he follows it swiftly down to land on soft carpet lighter than any cat.

Once again, two times too many, luck is needed but this time it is not against him. The man he is here to catch is sitting with his back to where his unexpected visitor drops in, his grey head bent low over a stack of papers. Perhaps it is some animal instinct, long buried but still alive under too much calculated cruelty that warns him of what will happen next, but it is too late. By the time he lifts his head to see what is happening it is viciously pulled back and his startled cry is cut short before it can leave his lips by a knife pressed carefully to his vulnerable throat.

They hold like that for a moment, assassin and target stock still in frozen tableau before the kill. The hunter knows that he has waited too long already, that he should do his work and be gone before an overzealous guard or helpful aide comes to interrupt. But logic is a fickle thing when the blood is hot, and anger burns in him sharp and sudden as he looks down at the man he’s come so far to find. Why shouldn’t he feel even a fraction of the fear he has caused, a taste of the helplessness and pain? Hate battles against better judgement, and he hesitates.

But even though the pause is brief, it is enough for the man with a sharp blade pressed to his windpipe to find what stands for his courage. When he does not find himself immediately bleeding out at the hands of his unknown assailant he risks speaking, swallowing painfully and carefully even as he feels a trickle of blood run from the sudden pain in his neck. If he can just get him talking he might be able to bargain, or at least stall long enough before the guards storm in to answer the panic alarm whose secret button on his watch he has just pressed.

“Who are you?” he rasps, voice already raw from strain.

His assailant’s eyes narrow and it nearly seems that he has been caught, but the distant sound of running feet snap him back into himself. Determination returns in a heartbeat to banish angry indecision, and the cold conviction on his face is more terrifying than any wild rage. And when he speaks, one word only but more than enough, his voice is a quiet whisper that echoes like a death knell in the empty room.

“Justice.”

Bones snap, and a body tumbles to the floor. A man who once helped dangle the world on a string now lolls limply in a heap, eyes staring into nothing as pages flutter down around him. No more than a minute later security forces burst through the door with guns at the ready only to find nothing but an empty room and a dead boss with no sign of who killed him. It is as though a ghost has come and gone, and that’s just the way he likes it. He is fleeing fast and will soon be gone, vanishing into the night like he has never existed at all. Perhaps he doesn’t exist. Sometimes it certainly feels that way.

One more down. Too many left to go.


End file.
